Free unexpected MIT courses to kick start the new year
From heavy metal to poker to the history of Samurai, make 2024 your year with these online course materials and educational resources.
Are you looking to learn a new language, explore musical genres, or improve your poker game in 2024? We’ve compiled 13 free online courses from MIT OpenCourseWare to kick start the new year on a positive note — from Italian, The Beatles, and heavy metal to poker theory, the history of Samurai, and different ways to understand climate change.
Learn (or create) a new language
How to Construct a Language
Create your own language while considering the basic linguistic characteristics of various languages of the world. This course material explores languages that have been deliberately constructed, including Esperanto, Klingon, and Tolkien’s Elvish.
Speak Italian with your Mouth Full
Learn basic conversational Italian, and discover Italian culture and the Mediterranean diet. Each topic in this course is based on bite-sized acquisition of Italian language and culture, as well as the preparation of a delicious dish.
Get creative with a music course
Heavy Metal 101
Learn everything you ever wanted to know about heavy metal music, including musicology, songwriting tropes, and how the genre tackles some of today’s biggest socio-political challenges — among other topics.
The Beatles
Delve into the music of The Beatles, from the band’s early years to their break-up. Learn how The Beatles’ musical style changed from skiffle and rock to studio-based experimentation. This course explores the cultural influences that helped to shape The Beatles and the band’s influence worldwide.
Beethoven to Mahler
Watch a recording of a concert of Beethoven violin sonatas on period instruments. This course also includes a discussion about Susanna Ogata and Ian Watson’s performance.
Take a playful management course
Poker Theory and Analytics
Improve your poker game by exploring theory and the applications of poker analytics to investment management and trading.
How to Win at Texas Hold’em Poker
Become a seasoned player at Texas Hold’em, one of the most popular variants of poker. This course covers general concepts, as well as the poker and math concepts needed to play the card game on a professional level.
Travel to the past with a history course
Inventing the Samurai
Discover the historical origins of the Japanese warrior class and its reinvention. This course covers the rise of the imperial court, interactions with the broader world, and the establishment of a warrior-dominated state.
Expand your mind with a science course
Tools for Robust Science
Explore cutting-edge tools and techniques designed to revitalize and enhance scientific practices in the cognitive and neuro sciences. This course illustrates how to identify obstacles to conducting robust scientific research, as well as tools to overcome these obstacles.
Thermodynamics and Climate Change
Learn the three laws of thermodynamics through their connection with climate change. Explore concepts such as entropy and enthalpy, applications like energy conversion and energy storage, and investigate the causes and effects of global warming from a thermodynamics perspective.
Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry
This course focuses on how chemistry is connected to important innovations — and sometimes unexpected consequences — in science and in life. You might start with the “Why This Matters” series of short excerpts from the course’s lecture videos to learn about real-world applications and creative directions for research.
Educational resources beyond the virtual classroom
Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit
These resources are made especially for educators who want to integrate climate justice content into courses across many disciplines, and they’re great for anyone exploring the many facets of climate justice.
Girls Who Build Cameras
This one-day, hands-on workshop for high school girls provides an introduction to camera physics and technology. Learn how to tear down old dSLR cameras, build a Raspberry Pi camera, design Instagram filters and Photoshop tools, and run your own version of this workshop.
These course materials and educational resources are available through MIT OpenCourseWare. Part of MIT Open Learning, OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum.
